wisdom in the dark
by alice in a coma
Summary: Someone has to be the Doctor, Rose thinks, so why not her? Rose's journey after Doomsday, through a series of connected one-shots. RoseTen. Part III: "So whatcha gonna do now?" Mickey asks, days later.
1. lover alone without love

At night, she stands on the balcony outside her bedroom and dreams of falling.

She can still feel the rush of air to her lungs, the adrenalin coursing through her body, the desperate need to _cling on for her life. _

She always falls anyway, no matter how much she tries to imagine holding on just a few seconds longer.

Now, she stands on that balcony and looks up to the sky all-wrong and pretends that the air she breathes in so deeply is the same air _he _breathes. She pretends that she will wake up the next morning and it will all have been a dream. She pretends that, somehow, the Doctor will come find her, that, by some miracle, he will show up on her doorstep or save her from a group of rabid mannequins, just like the first time.

Hell, she even pretends that she never even met the Doctor in the first place.

But no matter how much pretending she does—no matter how much she tries to act as if her wounded heart will heal—she cannot erase the feeling that she doesn't belong here: she has no place in this world, where things are the same, but they aren't, not really, because the one person who ever really meant anything is gone and she's just _not_ _whole_. No amount of wishing can make her mum or Mickey or her resurrected father ever quite enough.

That thought scares her because she's sure it's unhealthy to need someone so completely, but what scares her more is the awareness her fading memories. She spends her days worrying over the vanishing sound of his laughter in his ears and his look of concentration in her eyes.

She wonders, horrified, when he will become nothing more than a dusty box of forgotten recollections in the farthest corner of her mind.

She lies on her bed and lets these thoughts chase each other round and round her head. It hurts to move. Worse than that—it hurts to merely _be. _

This is not what the Doctor would have wanted for her, but her Doctor is not here, and she can't bring herself to care what he might have wanted.

Into the night, she whispers big, Bad secrets to the stars and begs salvation from the Universe.


	2. cracks

Everything heals, eventually. Except the things that don't.

Because no matter how much time she allows, there is always a crack in her heart that refuses to be mended. In the mornings, she wakes up, and it is there; she sits up in bed, and she debates, momentarily, going out for the day.

But the crack is always too big to conquer, so she pulls her covers over her head, and spends the day in bed.

Her mum doesn't understand it. And how could she, really? She has never experienced this sort of all-encompassing love. Because the Doctor may have burnt up a sun to wish her goodbye, but she would obliterate entire planets if it meant one more moment, one more smile, one more touch. She would kill for just one kiss. She would leave behind everything she holds dear and never look back.

Instead of any of that though, she lies there, miserable and aching because _she does not work, _and the one man who can fix her she can never have.

She's convinced she'll live out her life this way (not quite whole and forever confined to her bed) until one day, her mother—in true Jackie Tyler fashion—comes barging into her room and stands, furious and demanding, hands on her hips, and barks out, "All right, Rose Marion Tyler, I've had just about enough of this."

Shocked, Rose slowly turns and sits up ever-so-slightly.

Jackie looks at her in a way Rose has never seen before—it is the look of a mother who cannot bear her daughter's pain any longer.

She continues, "You've been moping around this house for _three weeks_ now, and I'm here to tell you that there ain't gonna be no more of it. You are a Tyler, for god's sakes! There's no way your gonna spend the rest of your life lying in bed. Not over a man; not even over _him_." Her face softens as she drops her hands to her sides. "He wouldn't want this for you, love. He'd want more."

And Rose, always so much more clever than anyone gave her credit for, knows this—has known it since her arrival home three weeks ago—so she doesn't argue when her mother adds, "So tomorrow, you are getting out of this bed, whether you like it or not."

As she leaves the room much more quietly than she came, Rose thinks about her mother. She thinks about the woman who spent eighteen years without her beloved husband; she thinks about Mickey, who has spent his life waiting for her; and she thinks about her father, who she has yet to get to really know. She thinks about little un-born Tony and about Sarah Jane, who warned her about this pain. And she thinks about Reinette and Jack Harkness, who got only tastes of their promised adventure.

But mostly she thinks about the Doctor, so old and so terribly lonely. And it occurs to her, suddenly, that she is not so alone as she once thought. Scattered across every Universe, there are a thousand bleeding hearts that beat with hers.

And maybe the cracks are necessary. Maybe, just maybe, every crack in her heart makes her a bit more brave, a bit more loving, a bit more _human. _Maybe, in some other Universe, in his TARDIS, the Doctor's hearts have matching cracks of their own.

_Some things, _she reminds herself, watching her mother's retreating form, _are worth getting your heart broken for. _

The next day, with a crack set firmly in her heart, she gets out of bed.


	3. do it for all the times we wish we had

_Do it for love_  
><em> Do it for us<em>  
><em> Do it for goodness sake<em>  
><em> Do it for all the times<em>  
><em> We wished we had<br>_~"Tidal," Imogen Heap

_...  
><em>

"So whatcha gonna do now?" Mickey asks, days later, after all the tears have been wiped away and she no longer looks like she might break into pieces if pushed too hard. They are sitting on her front steps, watching the cars as they speed along. It's been fifteen days, nine hours, six minutes, and thirty-two seconds since the Doctor disappeared for the last time. Four days, six hours, and fifty-two seconds since the tears ran out.

"Rose?" Mickey prods when his question prompts no answer. She frowns, but doesn't look at him. It's a fair question, she supposes, but that's just the problem—it's one she cannot answer.

After all, what is she _supposed_ to do? Get up, go to work, and act as if nothing ever happened? Act as if every adventure, every laugh, every near-death experience meant nothing? That would be a disservice not only to herself and to her lonely Doctor, but also to whatever force in the Universe gave her that precious gift.

The more she thinks about it, the more she doesn't _know_ what to do. What she _should_ do. Take that job at Torchwood? Travel the world? Climb back into bed and never leave? All she is completely certain of is the mismatched thrum of her being: as if she doesn't belong here, tethered to the ground permanently.

Maybe there is no place in the universe, she thinks, for a girl whose footing will never again quite be steady, in the proper sense of the word.

So, sitting on her porch watching the cars pass by down the road, she mutters, "I dunno" and hopes that's enough for him.

She maintains this mindset for days, wandering through the motions of her life with no direction and no purpose. She gets up, gets dressed, and spends her days wandering the town, memorizing the city that is simultaneously so different and yet exactly the same. She does not think about the Doctor; she does not really think about anything.

Until, one day, everything changes.

She is crossing the street toward her favorite little café—one of the few blessings about Pete's World, really; it's one she doesn't remember having in her home Universe—the streets crowded with people, all blustering past her on their way back to work from their lunch breaks. A burly woman with a low, dark bun and a green coat tumbles into her.

"Oy!" Rose snaps, watching the woman's retreating, unapologetic figure. "Watch where you're goin', yeah!"

As she turns back toward her destination, the crowd clears for just a moment and the sight she is met with shakes her to the bone.

A young blonde woman sits outside the café, laughing at the man across from her. Between them, there is a bowl of chips.

That seemingly insignificant moment is all it takes. Suddenly, every moment with the Doctor she has struggled, this past week, to repress, comes back to her in sensory overload. She hears every laugh, feels every touch, sees every smile and frown and worried glance. Tastes every chip shared. Inside her, something breaks; a howling echoes, not in her ears, but in her very _soul_. And it occurs to her, in that one, singular moment, that she knows exactly what to do with her life:

Live it.

And she will. Oh, how she will. She will live a life so full of adventure and passion that it will go down in history books. She will not stay cooped up in her house or in her _mind_ for a moment longer; she will get up and go to work and figure out every crevice of this new world she's been offered. No one will take this second chance from her, least of all herself. The Doctor would be ashamed of her, so broken, and she vows then and there to keep on running for him.

She swears, when her time is through, she will go down burning.

And it will be…fantastic.

When she gets home, she takes that job at Torchwood.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up here. I've been super, super busy. Also, do not despair: healing Rose will take a while, but she's about to get super kick-butt. God, I love that girl. **


End file.
